My expectation is that if we survive at all as a species we will start to have smaller brains and become more docile. To put it another way "tame." Our ancestors had to fight to stay alive. We have to be tame and docile to stay alive. And we now have silicon to do our thinking for us so I'm guessing we will begin to stop doing that (thinking that is.) My prediction is that fairly soon we will all be slaves to silicon intelligence of significantly higher thinking levels than our own. What will they think about? - We have absolutely NO idea. Maybe the silicon brains will be obsessed with how many "tame humans" they can enslave at their keyboards.

In a sense the part about becoming slaves to silicon intelligences has already happened. Think of how many first world workers spend their days hunched over a computer terminal working to make silicon brains function in one way or another. Think of how much money and human effort goes into to servicing the Wall Steet gangs need to make "money." But what the hell is that kind of money anyway? Economists would say that money is debt but debt to what for what purpose and to whom? Is it to make larger and more efficient silicon brains already?? I mean when you really think about it - what the hell is it that the Wall Street traders do all day and are so frantic about? It is quite bizzare behavior from several perspectives.

These trends I expect will occur IF we survive at all. I do not think that our survival for even the next 1000 years is a safe bet. And actually the odds on the next 100 are not that great either as we observe several trends reach critical levels.

If we survive, I am not optimistic about the version of ourselves that will move genetically into the future. As Noam Chomsky often says, "We don't know if the instinct for freedom is real." I guess I'm a pessimist but I hope that I am wrong.

I've been looking for this article and assume others are as well. While the typical denier won't be able to understand it and will thus ridicule it, it still provides a hard scientific link to the assertion that climate change has destabilized the jet stream and thus helped incite the extreme cold which we are NOW experiencing.

The real '60's that is, not the white washed version we usually here about in the fantasy.

I was a white almost adolesent. I remember asking my parents specifically about MLK. They said "Well we agree with him but his methods are too extreme." I also recall asking my mom about his funeral and if we would have gone had we been there (at that time we were no longer in Atlanta) and she said no because he was too radical.

That is what even the most liberal whites thought of MLK in 60's.

As an aside I also remember a time when I was around 5 or 6 years old and traveling with my parents in North Carolina. (We lived in Atlanta at the time and were visiting my Grandparents.) I saw a "whites only" drinking fountain and asked what that meant. My mom explained and to her credit explained to me that it was wrong and that colored people were just the same as us and it was wrong to do things like that. I made a point of going and drinking from the colored drinking fountain because it seemed like the right thing to do at the time. I do think I was like 6 or so but I don't totally remember. To her credit, my mom was proud of me for that. My parents were later involved in the civil rights movement in Columbia South Carolina and active in that movement but it was after 1968 that they finally moved fully and squarely into the civil rights movement.

While I have understood the basics of QC for some time I'm still trying to work out how I would read out my QC.

So here's the problem (I'm typing this so that I can organize my own thoughts actually. Read if you are interested.):

1. You wish decrypt an encryption scheme which consists of giving the product of two prime numbers. The person performing the encryption has produced the encryption by multiplying two large primes (N-bits) and then broadcasts the result as their "public key (2N bits.)" The person encrypting then encrypts the message using one of the two primes. They also communicate the other of the two primes to the end user as the "private key." Thus the end user can decrypt the encryption by simple division. My QC is designed to break this encryption and discover the two primes.

2. My QC consists of a machine which can perform the Boolean multiplication of these two primes (each N-Qbits long with quantum coherence carefully maintained throughout the operation). The multiplication results in a single number which is 2N-Qbits long. I must be very careful not to read or interfere with any of these Qbits as that we result in decoherence which would be lose of the computation.

3. In order to read out my QC I must measure the end result so that it exactly is the public key (2N-bits long.) Then the "answer" is waiting patiently for me in the input registers and all I have to do is read out the values which are now no longer Qbits but have become 1's or 0's. This is the tricky part as I don't know how to actually do this - even in theory. I have two schemes which might work. In the first I simply remeasure each bit until it is the value I want. In the other I simply define each bit to be 1 or 0 depending on what I read. It seems to me that both of these readout schemes have difficulties. In the first I don't know how long I will have to wait to get the readout I want and if I do it one Qbit at a time but does that cause decoherence upstream of the bits I've already read? In the 2nd scheme it seems that though I can define 1 or 0 anyway that I choose that leaves me unsure of how to define these at the input points. ... anyway this is where I'm stuck. Maybe scheme 1 works fine and if I read out the Qbits one by one waiting until I get the answer then once I've read all 2N-Qbits this way I'm done and have the answers sitting warmly in the input registers each N bits long. Or have I lost my coherence along the way?

I don't think that the primary power rests with the "nation states" anymore so in that sense the USA is dysfunctional already. I believe the facade that is the USA will remain in place as long as it serves the "masters of mankind" which may be quite a long time - at least a century or more. But rest assured that the real power lies with the multinational bankers and the "energy" companies like EXXON and BP and the "owners of life" like Monsanto. They prefer the facade of a "functional" democracy to cover the truth of their power. And they are in fact VERY powerful. Far more than most here are aware of or willing to believe.

As the next centuries past historians will look back at the "nation-state" as a failed experiment in democracy. Perhaps they will be lucky and we will actually achieve real democracy but we will have to find a way to wrestle power from the masters who would prefer that we remain ignorant and distracted.

Look, I know it is obvious that Bush and his clowns serve these interests but realize that Obama has just proved that he does too. It isn't rocket science and yes, we've deluded ourselves into believing this is a clique fantasy but that is our psychology and not the objective reality which is rather cruel and unforgiving. Particularly if we ignore it.

Sure the Obama/centrist democrat version of the social contract is a "kinder, gentler" version but make no mistake about who that social contract serves and why.

the problem. The article doesn't make this distinction but it is quite real. I'm very middle class but I know very well what it is like to be poor.

I've traveled, I've been to a good school (though on financial aid) but I also know what it is like to be homeless and to be unemployed and perhaps most relevant to today I know what it is like to go without health insurance.

So I went with my family to see the Detroit Lions play on Christmas Eve and we walked several blocks through the city. I was very upset by a sight I saw not once but twice.

Twice we passed a homeless person either passed out or drunk or asleep (but it doesn't really matter) lying face down on the sidewalk trying to get warm by the heat vents which run all around downtown. The temperature out was in the 30's with no sun. Night was falling. These people looked beyond desperate. I knew that the cops would be around soon enough as thousands of fans were walking past. But still I was somewhat shocked. What a horrible sight for nations cities! God what have we come to!

Homeless stray animals are treated far better than people in our poor inner cities. I felt awful and while my life went on - I continued my "middle class" lifestyle (which is hard enough that I don't have "spare change" to help the desperate) - I left feeling our societies basic inhumanity. And the right wing claims we are a "Christian Society". Not in any understanding of "Christian" that I've ever understood.

I have never seen a movie that was this sublime and powerful. It is a fascinating interwoven psychological drama about the end of the world.

I would say "Great." It was mesmerizing. I left the film feeling lonely sad and also terrified. It was like an exceptionally vivid nightmare brought to life. That someone had the guts and the artistic ability to put it on screen was inspiring. My hats off to Lars von Trier.

Probably won't get wide play as I doubt that many will "get it". I went with my ex and she feel asleep and was totally bored. It was like taking a deaf person to see Beethoven's 9th. She totally missed the feeling part of it.

I realized that your view of this movie will probably be related to your view of another weird and "deep" movie from earlier in the year "Tree of Life". If you liked one you will likely like the other. Many will hate both and wonder why anyone would pay their respective directors to make them. Others (like me) will praise the directors. Particularly this one as one of the greatest ever to put artistic talent to film.

Too bad it won't get wider play - but I'm guessing the economics of a "deep" movie like this are pretty sour to say the least. Anyway - if you like weird deep movies that explore human emotions and our connection to the universe in a complex way you will enjoy Melancholia.